In countries where liberty is most esteemed, there are
laws by which a single person is deprived of it, in order to
preserve it for the whole community. Such are in England
what they call Bills of Attainder. These are in relation to
those Athenian laws by which a private person was condemned,
provided they were made by the unanimous suffrage
of six thousand citizens. They are in relation also to
those laws which were made at Rome against private citizens,
and were called privileges. These were never passed
except in the great meetings of the people. But in what
manner soever they were enacted, Cicero was for having
them abolished, because the force of a law consists in its
being made for the whole community. I must own, notwithstanding,
that the practice of the freest nation that
ever existed induces me to think that there are cases in
which a veil should be drawn for a while over liberty, as it
was customary to cover the statues of the gods.